Hermit crabs move into other animals’ discarded shells as shelter, because the ocean is a treacherous place, full of hungry predators. Half a billion years ago, another creature evolved the same ...

So-called “penis worms” get attention for all the wrong reasons. But new research finds they may have been early pioneers in a creative survival technique. By Asher Elbein Consider this evolutionary ...

Although 2020 may have brought the hermit lifestyle to its zenith, a team of scientists from Durham University in England and Yunnan University in China now says the way of living first appeared in ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Nothing else in the ocean quite compares to the penis worm. At least ...

Researchers have discovered the oldest known example of a predator-prey “arms race,” based on their study of ancient fossils. This ancient predator-prey relationship took place 517 million years ago ...

Researchers have shed new light on the evolution of biomineralized columnar pillars in the shells of small marine shellfish called phosphatic-shelled or linguliform brachiopods. The research, ...

Grand Canyon fossils in the Bright Angel formation reveal 500M-year-old animals with dual feeding structures, reshaping ...

Stephen has degrees in science (Physics major) and arts (English Literature and the History and Philosophy of Science), as well as a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication. Stephen has degrees in ...

If you were to condense the planet’s 4.5-billion-year history into a single calendar year, then sometime from the 18th to the 20th of November, as conventional wisdom would have it, the animal kingdom ...

The great, car-sized predatory "shrimp" that was master of Earth's seas a half billion years ago may have been unable to eat anything harder than baby food. Several lines of evidence along with a new ...

Beginning around 542 million years ago, a profusion of animals with shells and skeletons began to appear in the fossil record. So many life forms appeared during this time that it is often referred to ...

The familiar Cambrian explosion, which started around 540 million years ago, was a game-changer for life on Earth. Bacteria (and archaea) had ruled the planet for over 3 billion years before ...